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Sunday, June 29, 2014

Elizabeth J. Kolodziej is a novelist and a lover of gadgets, writing, mysteries, and an avid reader. Her paranormal romance, The Last Witch Series, is coming up on its fourth book, Demonic Charms, and there is more on the way! With a bachelor’s degree in Fiction Writing from George Mason University and her ongoing learning of the art of writing, Elizabeth believes she can truly help others master their own art and love of writing. With the support of her family, friends, dog (Sherlock) and cat (Ahmeemotep) she is more than happy to give her readers exactly what they want in her books...adventure. Find Elizabeth on Twitter and Facebook.

I am going to write a quick and easy way to hopefully help you fix your writing block. This will work for panster writers over plotter writers though, which I am more of.

Sometimes we get caught up in the moment of the story. It hits us like a tons of bricks (cliché but so what) and we just WRITE. We have to. The story has come and we must answer the muse. But sometimes that can be our downfall. We can spend a month writing the first half of the story and suddenly forget what it is all about. This happened to me while writing Dealing Death. And since I am a panster I have forgotten where the story needs to go.

What is an easy and fast way to fix this problem?

Write a blurb!

Blurbs are short synopses of your work that should explain in a few sentences (or two paragraphs) what the story is about and what the questions of the story are.

Take for instance my story of Little Red Riding Hood. I needed to know what type of character Red was going to be. For my horror slash Steampunk take on this story I wanted to make Red different from the normal everyday version of her sweet, innocent self. So I put a short paragraph about how she is changed and why she isn’t so sweet anymore.

I also wanted to give the grandmother a bigger role. So I went on to add a little bit about her role in the story to the blurb.

Finally comes the question: Who are the protagonist and antagonist? What is stopping the hero from completing whatever job he or she is setting out to do? What are the two possible outcomes of this story you are creating? Because...normally...there are two ways a story can end for certain.
Once you have flushed out and examined your characters PLUS asked the hard questions about the story, usually you will come back to what it is your story is about and what you aimed to do with it.

I hope this helps you out as much has it as helped me. :wink:

Let me know what your thoughts and opinions are. Do you do something similar? Does this help you at ALL???

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